Oh my Ozarks

It was sometime when I was 12, sprawled on the black bed in the middle of a bedroom decorated like a subway station (spray paint and all) that I established my membership in that exclusive group of adolescents (READ: everybody) determined to live in a big city.

We come from far and near, with motives from "I want to live somewhere where I can't throw a rock and hit both of my exes and my sister," to "I'd like to get lost in something other than a suburb/cornfield/strip mall." In my case it was neither of these. Instead, it was the predicament of growing up in a city built on the hedonism of vacationers, with no legal way to participate in the festivities at the likes of Pleasure Island and Downtown Disney.

Even now I can hear 95.3 Party extolling the virtues of miscellaneous swanky Orlando clubs, in which I vowed to commence lounging and swilling martinis upon my 21st birthday. Imagine my surprise when I graduated college and my parents moved... to Arkansas. Yes, I said "Arkansas," the heartland marvel with nothing standing between it and Kansas but an "Arrr" and potentially a tornado. And did my parents have the social decency to move to spa-spackled Hot Springs or historically important Little Rock? Why, of course not. Instead they packed up and hauled off to Ft. Smith, a town nationally revered for... its airport bathroom, which was rated the No. 1 cleanest restroom in the country in 2005.

For my first visit, over Christmas, I prepared myself for the worst. Jesus billboards, acid-washed jeans, liberal graduate student hunting season-nothing was going to phase me. Then I got to the gate in Memphis International and boarded a plane full of overzealous jean outlet patrons, not a single au courant hairstyle among them. And then I was afraid.

Since my parents had only recently moved to town and were familiar with few of the attractions, I spent most of Christmas break at the house, safe from tornados and the firearm-equipped. Then I immediately went home, threw myself into 4 months of work and emerged with a master's degree and a semipermanent headache.

Perhaps I forgot to mention that another quality shared by the future city folk of America is a tendency to live too fast. We eat too much fast food, spend too much on fast cars and stress out over our entirely too fast lives. My own drive to make it to the big city has driven me straight into some (mental, financial, personal) roadblocks. So this time, when I went home to Arkansas, I resolved to do nothing if not relax. And relax I did. Once I got past the idea that Arkansas needed to be something it was never intended to be, I finally got to see its charm. I spelunked through caves that the outlaws of the Old West used as hideouts, I gambled at the Choctaw Casino across the border and I ate my share of biscuits with chocolate gravy (delicious, I assure you).

And when it came time to celebrate my scholastic achievement, we headed out to the best restaurant in town, chosen not for its posh decor, but for its unrivaled view of the Arkansas River. There my family and I could leave fast to the emptying of (several) wine bottles and concentrate on being together. Come terrorists, come the melting of the glaciers, come the end of civilization as we know it, around here somebody's neighbor somebody will have a hunting dog and a freezer full of venison, and we'll just wait it out in the ole outlaws' caves. Although I don't think you'll see me in a mullet anytime soon, I think I finally understand the appeal.

So, if you ever do stop in Ft. Smith, tell the Purnells I sent ya. And seriously, you need to take a look at that bathroom, it is out of control.